23-07-2016, 06:53 AM
HDDs are very reliable when not used heavily. One that's sitting on a shelf should have a very long life. Even when spinning they're good, provided they're kept cool-ish and not exercised too hard. Heavily used servers wear out their HDDs a lot faster than ordinary PCs. It's also the only inexpensive medium that's both big and easy to clone. Minidiscs may be reliable but they hold very little data. Shellac and vinyl can't be cloned and can only be copied with effort.
Once you have your data on a HDD it's trivial to clone it and keep a copy or copies elsewhere. Use different makes of HDD to avoid systematic manufacturing faults.
Flash cannot be regarded as archival. Not USB sticks, not SD cards, not SSDs. 10 years max data retention. Highly convenient for many things but not suitable for stuff you want to keep.
One significant risk with all modern formats is the technology to read them in 50+ years time. Look at the problems with reading old tape formats etc now. Not just recovering the bits and bytes, but their meaning when we've long forgotten what .DOC etc are.
Once you have your data on a HDD it's trivial to clone it and keep a copy or copies elsewhere. Use different makes of HDD to avoid systematic manufacturing faults.
Flash cannot be regarded as archival. Not USB sticks, not SD cards, not SSDs. 10 years max data retention. Highly convenient for many things but not suitable for stuff you want to keep.
One significant risk with all modern formats is the technology to read them in 50+ years time. Look at the problems with reading old tape formats etc now. Not just recovering the bits and bytes, but their meaning when we've long forgotten what .DOC etc are.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
